Out of the Abyss, into the Flames

"誰是外國人?"

 - Chinese Student 

Today was the first day starting the Pre-Course of the Academy. Waiting in the courtyard, I followed the Chinese students when the teachers arrived shortly after. Then an older looking student stepped up and asked me where I'm from in excellent English. He identified himself as Julius and was from Taiwan, which is considered as a foreigner among all of the Chinese students.

We walked together into the main hall of the building and soon realized that I'm going to stick out of all of the students. The vast majority of the students at the Pre-Course turn out to be from China. It felt somewhat intimidating and I realized I was getting strange looks. Eventually I run into the other "foreigners". There was an Indian, an Englishman, and one girl from Korea which was extremely shy.

We huddled together in the back and with the help of Julius, we found out some things about course and how this is the norm at the beginning. We were ~5 foreigners and ~90 Chinese. Eventually the rector walks in with his Chinese translator which then he proceeds to quietly whisper in his ear. Then he makes all of the announcements on how class is structured and times of attendance to all of the students in Chinese, Luckily we had our friend from Taiwan to translate for us. Though eventually the teachers notice a batch of foreigners standing in the corner and begin to shout the rest of the instructions in Russian.

The three disciplines are drawing, painting, and composition. We start in the morning at 09:30 with drawing and later on at 11:20 with painting. Compositions are done on a list of themes which we will have to show once a week to our assigned teachers.

That was all for today. We were told that tomorrow we would begin with a cast drawing and a still life painting. I knew that I was in for a wild ride from this point.